Modeling Community in the Prussian East: The Tuchel Heath, 1893–1918

The German-Polish borderlands in the late nineteenth century witnessed several attempts to establish model communities.  While the Prussian state’s efforts to create model German communities through the Royal Settlement Commission (Königlicher Ansiedlungskommission) are perhaps most famous, another project has received far less attention: the reforestation of wastelands through the region, particularly the Tuchel Heath in Pomerelia.   Starting in 1893, as evidence for the failure of the Settlement Commission’s project to recruit German settlers mounted, Prussian officials initiated a widespread reforestation effort in the borderlands, hoping to control the landscape and establish model sylvan communities where local peasants, led by Prussian forestry officials, would learn the virtues of German modernity: discipline, education (Erziehung), and productivity.  By creating new stands of timber, Prussian foresters hoped to transform the local population—widely dismissed as Slavic wood thieves, poachers, and arsonists—into model citizens, ready to work their own ameliorated plots of land, serve as a labor force in the Prussian state forests, and above all, identify themselves as loyal Germans.  Despite rosy assessments, however, the project ultimately failed to create the sense of community Prussian officials hoped for.